A NATIONAL daily reported on Sunday that over 38 universities including 12 public universities almost have no research funds for imparting empirical knowledge to students to march on quality education. There is no way to build new knowledge without research but these universities are avoiding it to improve teaching with changing global perspectives. University teachers are rather engaging in commercial consultancy and such misuse of academic talents is taking severe tool depriving the students to enrich with knowledge from new research outputs to prepare for better career, in addition to depriving the nation from making contributions to global civilization.
The purpose of the University is not only to run classroom teaching; they work as incubators to promoting new knowledge breaking new horizons in the field of science, technology and social education. But research in our universities is only decreasing day by day reducing them to mere crowding grounds of students to take some academic degrees without much insight to practical professional development. Most public universities have become hub to political activism while private universities have turned into corporate bodies selling courses to earn money at exorbitant rates on semester basis. It is clear that universities have merely become teaching-oriented organizations without pushing for basic research to fulfil the demand of higher education.
It is a shame that veteran professors now take lien to work for consultancy firms or become part-time teacher in private universities at higher salaries without much bothering that the job of a university teacher is basically comprised of classroom teaching and indoor research to bring excellence to the field of education. Research creates new ground of education and teachers teach the students accordingly. But in our country, research is withering out and business is all that now dominating the varsity teaching. Surprisingly the University Grants Commission (UGC) is playing the role of a spectator without forcing the varsities to earmark part of their fund to research activities.
The report has made the timely disclosure and what is important is that the government and the UGC in particular should take the matter seriously to make the varsities research oriented. We are living in a globalized world where job competency is highly skill based and knowledge needs to be upto date in any field from global context. Teaching old time theories in the classrooms is no longer the attraction of modern education. It needs to be regularly improved through innovative methods and observations and that is what students need to be taught.
We join other experts and call upon the varsities that research has no alternative to developing education and we hope the UGC would take every step to overcome the shortcoming.
